Study On The Moderating Effect Of Switching Costs Between Satisfaction And E-store Loyalty

To foster loyal customers is the core topic in the area of marketing, because it influences the extent of the benefit which the company gets. The emergency of the Internet company hasn't changed the demand of getting loyal customers. Both creating excellent satisfaction and enhancing the switching costs are very important ways to have the loyal customers. But, in Internet, the researches on the relationships among them are not studied well in China. Especially, there is no research about the segments of the switching costs in Internet. The moderating effect of switching costs in the satisfaction-e-store loyalty link is also lacking in Internet.Taking the B2C website as example, this paper employs the empirical study to discuss the moderating effect of switching costs on the relationship between satisfaction and e-store loyalty. Firstly, the paper reviews the related literatures about satisfaction, switching costs and loyalty, and then defines what satisfaction, switching costs and e-store loyalty are in Internet. On the basic of the literature review, the paper divides switching costs into three dimensions, including risk costs, procedure costs and financial costs according to the results of the focus group. Then the paper proposes a moderating effect model of switching costs based on the literature review, and hypothesis. Following is scale development, research design, data collection and analysis.The empirical research provides support for the model. The results show that ,firstly, satisfaction still leads to e-store loyalty in Internet. Secondly, there is moderating effect of switching costs in satisfaction and e-store loyalty link. Different kinds of switching costs have different effect, concretely the moderating effect of the procedure costs is biggest, and the one of financial costs is lowest. Thirdly, when the switching costs level is above the average, satisfaction influences the e-store loyalty more weakly. At last, we discuss the results and point out some managerial implications and future directions.